The 2006 World Series of Poker Dopefest at Las Vegas!!! (July 27-30th)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
121

Go, Capa!! I’m so pleased for you – take it to 'em on Friday, baybee!

I did overcome my pokerphobia enough to play some $2/$4 limit today. I won a couple of small pots, but not enough to keep me in the black; I dropped $27 in about an hour or an hour and a half of play. No big deal, certainly, but the whole not-getting-hit-by-the-flop thing is really getting old. So I packed up and headed off to the Monte Carlo’s craps tables again, where I clocked another winning session. Now I’m just chilling in my room, counting my money and planning my next foray onto the casino floor.

122

Hey Capa, can you email your name to me so I can look for you on ESPN’s coverage?

Good to see you recovering, Aholi. It’s a tough town to be in when your broke, and still itchin’ to play.

123

Only if the guns are on the hips and are loaded.

124

That particular hand was the last one before dinner. I heard the dealer call for the floor in a voice I’ve never quite heard before. It was best described as terror. I stopped on the way out the door to look at the table. One guy had AsAd, one had AsJc. Flop was all spades, they both get all in, and when they turn the cards, they both have the As.

Floor decides to chop pot. Our dealer after dinner suggested the dealer may have scooped an A from the other deck. The decks are colored differently only on a thin line that borders the card. It is either black or red. I would think you would notice the difference in the hole when you got a wrong color, but it’s not glaringly obvious. The other option is that someone had palmed one from a different table and inserted it on that one.

125

I looked on cardplayer.com, I’m at position 454/561 from day 2A. I’m assuming I’ll be around 900th out of 1100 when they combine day 2. I’m actually pretty happy with that, considering how cold my deck has been.

One thing I learned yesterday that I should have learned before, but it was never THIS painfully obvious–The importance of value betting. There were 2-3 hands that I won where I know I was ahead and didn’t extract enough money. If I manage to pick up an extra 1-2K chips on just a couple of these, then later when I double up 2x, those become anywhere from 8-20K chips, which would be really handy right now. It’s easy to not miss 2K chips when you make a hand to get to 18K, but when you double up twice after that, those 2K chips look much bigger.

126

Too cool, Yeti.

127

He flashed his J high flush to the entire side of the table. When I saw it, I was thinking that he just had to lay it down.

Yeti did a great job of keeping a poker face right then. Perfect.

128

Good luck today Capa!

129

I bet he felt like an idiot when one of the guys he showed it to called him down with a bigger flush.

130

Day 3 starts on Friday. They gave us a day off today.

131

Well good luck today,then!!

132

I’m not going to recap all of day 3 yet, I’ll do that later this week. I’m losing my mind over the hand I went out on. I finished 583rd. Had over 100K chips when I busted. Was running my table. I’ve played this hand over and over and not slept or hardly eaten since Friday night…dunno how to play this different. I’d really like some analysis and other ideas…especially from Sam Stone if he is maybe reading this.

I am in seat 6. Blinds are 400-1500-3000. Been on a rush, run from 50K chips to over 100K in an hour. I raise and come over the top of everyone, but I get AA 2x, JJ2x, KK, and AK once in a little over an hour. I’m in BB. Everyone in seats 1-5 are weak/loose, everyone in 7-9 are tight/weak. I’m in heaven. If I try to steal blinds on the 7-9 guys, and they reraise, it’s legit. Seat 1 raises to 9K. I look down in BB and have QhQc. I debate:
1)call, but I’m out of position. I’d rather end this now.
2)reraise-he will call with AK, maybe 99-JJ, either way I can evaluate flop for AK and should run through the others
3)reraise all in

I raise another 27K. He sits forever, gets a count of my chips, and calls. Flop is Jd8d3d. I don’t want to lose control of the hand by checking. There is around 80K in pot, I have 60K or so left. I push all in, and figure if he turns over AdKd, that’s poker…but any hand with Ad except maybe AdJx, he has to lay down, I can’t believe he will risk his whole tourny on a flush draw. He calls and turns over Ad4d. wtf

(at this point I lose my mind, scream about 6 F-bombs in various sentences, kick my chair, my bag, and manage to attract Hellmuths attention from the ESPN feature table…if ESPNs floor cameras catch this tantrum it will surely be wonderful and embarrassing television)

I turn a Q, but fail to pair the board and I’m gone. I cash $20,600. I should have run much deeper. I don’t know how I could have played that hand differently, unless I just go all in PF, but I really believe this clown would have called anyway.

I was RUNNING that table…and we were a long way from breaking…I could have kept picking up 20-30K chips an hour easily, and more if my cards stayed hot. I’m stuck on that hand…I need to find a way to get past it, and I think the only way is to get it out into discussion on some different forums until I can reason out my mistake.

133

I don’t see how he made that call. Trying to steal with A4 suited is ok, if his read on seats 2-5 are the same as yours. But when he called your re-raise, what was he thinking? He couldn’t have been liking his hand that much. He may have been thinking that your rush was bullying the table a bit, and decided that he could make a play post flop with an ace high if the flop was scary. I wonder what he would have done if your preflop raise was in the range of 36K to 45K?

134

Well, according to the poker odds calculator, if I understand correctly he is getting about 2 to 1 on his money. So if you have an Ace he shouldn’t make the call, although it isn’t atrocious odds. If you have pocket pair he is getting about even money (except for AA). If you raised with anything else he is getting better odds. Given your position you probably have something that he shouldn’t call with. However, genreally it isn’t a hugely poor bet,especially considering if he hits the flop he will probably get a nice big payoff. Plus he has position on you so he can speculate a little more. Plus he was probably sick of you bullying :). I think it is a poor call, but I am not sre it is egregiously bad.

The $9,000 inital bet was actually worse, IMO. What was his chip stack?

Unfortuantely you got very unlucky. Still, congrats on cashing at the WSOP. I never had so my opinion is probably worth about that much.

135

I did a little rough estimating of the villain’s winning chances (with the help of CardPlayer.com’s odds calculator, and it seems to me that he actually had a pretty easy call with that hand. Here are my calculations:

A4d up against…Winning Percent…Assumed Likelihood …Wins
AA…10%…5…0.5
AK through A5…15%…35…5.25
KK through 55…33%…25…8.25
KQ, QJ, T9, etc…60%…25…15
stone bluff, like J7o…60%…10… 6
…100… 35

Starting pot…8500
Villain raises…9000
Capa’s reraise…27000
Pot to villain…44500
Vill has to put in…18000
Pot odds …2.47:1

Min WP needed to call…28.80

If villain puts Capa on a hand distribution close to what I’ve got in the above table, he should call anything up to about a 45000 reraise.

Man, that was a pain to format. And I bet despite the fact that it looks ok on preview it’s gonna be a mess when I submit it.

136

I just wanted to point out that Capa’s raise actually gave the villain the correct odds to call, even if he’d known that Capa held a pair of queens. The pot was laying him 2.47:1 but the odds against him were only 2:1. In order to force him into making a mistake by calling, Capa needed to raise to about 36K.

I’m not intending this as a critique of Capa’s play at all – it’s probably exactly what I would have done in the circs. I just started having fun with numbers, found it educational and thought I’d share. Also, I thought I might have screwed up somewhere in my calculations, and one of you eagle-eyed number-crunchers could spot it.

(All that previewing and I just realized I missed a close paren in my last post. But at least the columns aren’t too bad).

137

Sorry for the triple post, but I just realized that my calcs are predicated on the assumption that Capa put 27000 into the pot as his raise. But up there he says he raised “another 27000.” Assuming that means that he called the 9K plus raised 27K than what he did was put 36K into the pot. That means he gave his opponent 1.98:1 pot odds, making the call against QQ (2:1 against A4d) a marginally unprofitable play. But, again, if the villain put Capa on the kind of hand distribution I lay out above, then he would assume he had about a 35% chance to win and he needed a minimum of 33.5% to call. Much more marginal situation, but still more profitable than not.

138

Also, mathematically, there’s no way he should have laid down AdXo on the flop. At that point, the pot was about 140K and he only had to put in 60K. With the pot laying him 2.3:1, he’d only need a winning percentage of around 30% to call, and his actual winning percentage would be around 47%. Even if he thought you had hit a set on that flop, his winning percentage and his pot odds would be about equal.

(Sorry again – I’m not post-padding, I’m just thinking in spurts).

139

That doesn’t even takeinto account the fact that if he hits the flush he will win much more. I think that the implied odds are even better. I still think the inital $9,000 bet was poor.

140

Concur.